I had vowed to give a rest to any and all things Tesla Then this week happened. Here’s more evidence that Tesla Motors is a stock play working hard to enrich the few and mislead the many:

Musk on stage with the Model 3.

* Goldman Sachs has raised its rating to “Buy” from “Neutral” and has set a price target of $250 (US). So what’s the big deal? Well, the timing is convenient for Tesla at best, criminal at worst.

You see, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters of a new share offering Tesla says will be worth about $1.4 billion (US). Analysts at Goldman and Morgan Stanley rank among the most bullish in the industry. Coincidence?

BTW, two years ago Morgan Stanley pulled the same stunt Goldman is doing now — analyst upgrade coinciding with the timing of a share offering. If this isn’t criminal, it certainly is suspicious.

* Tesla CEO Elon Musk is exercising 5.5m stock options that according to Tesla are worth about $550 million. Tesla says Musk needs the money to pay taxes on options granted in 2009. Tesla says Musk will use all the money to pay those taxes, while also donating 1.2 million options to charity.

Is it a coincidence that Goldman went all bullish on Tesla at a time that precisely coincides with Musk exercising options that don’t expire until December?

* Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are lead underwriters, and Deutsche Bank Securities, Citibank, and BofA Merrill Lynch are additional book-running managers for this latest offering. All these investment banks have huge stakes in Tesla. Deutsche has a $290 price target. Morgan Stanley a $333 target.

These actions of insiders and investors appear to be intertwined to a degree that is mind-boggling. The whole thing reeks.

* Various investment banks have loaned Elon Musk hundreds of millions of dollars, with those loans secured by Tesla stock. Here’s the problem: If Tesla’s shares sink, Musk may be faced with a margin call, forcing Musk to sell all or part of his stake in Tesla.

This would give us the spectacle of Tesla’s CEO selling swaths of shares in his own company as a result of a share decline, thus driving down the share price further.

We can only hope that at some point, this cavalcade of shady dealings will catch the eyes of regulators and prosecutors. If not, we can assume that the financial system is completely and totally broken.

These investment banks, Tesla, Tesla’s CEO, the CEO’s brother and all the other well-connected people and institutions playing this game — are they all free to enrich themselves doing as they wish, operating without penalty and prosecution in ways that if not illegal are certainly immoral?